


A little shift - sideways

by Malicean



Series: A little shift [2]
Category: Man of Steel (2013), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Family Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23701654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malicean/pseuds/Malicean
Summary: A little what-if scenario forA little shift.Tendragosleft a comment on FFnet that had my muse thinking ‘Hey, that’s a cute idea!’ And then the current situation, that makes you long for family, did the rest. Rare fluffiness ahead.
Relationships: Dru-Zod/Faora Hu-Ul, Jor-El/Lara Lor-Van, Lara Lor-Van & Faora-Ul
Series: A little shift [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709494
Comments: 14
Kudos: 30





	A little shift - sideways

* * *

It starts with the most innocuous of things.

A certain tightness when she slips into her bodysuit, that she hasn’t felt in years. Hasn’t felt since the very first days aboard the ship to be exact, and for a few days Lara just wonders at the oddity.

Then her analytical mind draws a correlation and stops her in her tracks.

She was barely weeks post-partum at the tribunal, her figure still rounded by the reserves her body had set aside to care for her baby. They served her well in the near-starvation right after their return to real-space, but even if times haven’t been that bad for a while, Lara has been lean ever since. For those curves to return ….

The world whites out for a moment.

Then she tears off towards their makeshift infirmary, fumbles with the scanner she has put together herself, and finally forces her fingers steady enough to get a proper reading.

Then she stares at the results until someone roughly shakes her shoulders.

“Lara Lor-Van!” Faora-Ul hisses into her face. “What in Rao’s radiant name is wrong with you?!?” 

Lara stares blankly at the worried soldier.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurts helplessly. “I’m having a baby!”

Faora gives her an incredulous look and promptly starts to check her over for a head injury.

“You can’t have a baby,” the commander says matter-of-factly. “It’s impossible. Babies don’t just bud off adult people like plants do. You need a Genesis Chamber and the Codex and …”

“You need two people,” Lara interrupts. “One male and one female. And then, well, babies pretty much _do_ bud off.”

The soldier stares at her skeptically. “How?”

Lara explains. She draws diagrams. And in the end, she has to admit, “We are likely not as fertile as our ancestors were in ages past; when Jor and I tried for Kal, we made many attempts, but I didn’t fall pregnant until Jor developed a semi-artificial means of ensuring conception.”

Lara smiles weakly. “But … the attempts – the purely natural attempts – they were pleasant. And a powerful way of affirming togetherness.”

Faora, who has gone more and more stone-faced over the length of the explanation, tilts her head quizzically. “Togetherness?”

“As in the opposite of loneliness,” Lara explains, and for a moment the tough soldier’s front softens. For the handful of survivors of what was once an entire population, the universe is a _very_ lonely place. And anything that can stave off the feeling is a precious gift indeed.

“So, you repeated the attempts?” Faora guesses. “For the togetherness and expecting failure for … _conception_?” The soldier carefully sounds out the foreign expression.

Lara nods and Faora frowns pensively. Then she nods decisively and Lara remembers belatedly that the commander is second only to General Zod when it comes to strategic planning, for Faora has the eyes of a _woman with a plan_.

“Will any male and female do?” the commander ascertains.

“Both have to be adults – and not too much into senescence, I believe. And … I don’t know how far military modifications go,” Lara advises. She doesn’t say, the anatomical prerequisites might have been considered an irrelevant vestige of the past and removed as a way of streamlining the body.

Faora just gives her a sharp look.

“You have a medical scanner right here – use it on me,” she orders.

This is a horrible – _horrible!_ – idea, but Lara does as told. She is reasonably sure that Zod won’t strangle her baby at birth, by now, but he certainly won’t take the news well, and some allies in crime would deflect part of his ire. _Especially if one of the babies were to be his …._

But, no. The notion is ridiculous. Even if Faora succeeded in her mad plan, she couldn’t get that far before Lara’s condition becomes obvious – the only reasons why it isn’t obvious to everyone already, is that no one aboard except for Jor has ever seen a pregnant woman before, and her husband has no reason to suspect.

“It will likely take practice. Lots of practice.” Lara warns.

The soldier just smirks. Endless repetitive training is one of the constants of the military caste’s life, after all.

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

Lara is appalled – but not surprised – when Zod turns up with a nasty laceration across his hip a few days later, an implausibly contrite Faora hovering at his side and insisting that Lara uses her scanner on the general to ensure that there is no hidden internal damage.

There isn’t.

The commander smiles predatorily at the news.

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

Lara has never been so grateful for the salvageable replicator contained in the second-to-last outpost they visited as she is these next few weeks. It is capable of creating not only armor – which is why Zod and his soldiers went through the hassle of dragging it aboard – but proper robes as well. In the snug undersuits, the bump would already be clear to see.

She had taken to wearing robes whenever her work allows for it _before_ her revelation, partly to counter the soldiers reveling in their new properly fitted armors, partly for the same feeling of nostalgia that motivated _them._

She takes to wearing them religiously now, but hasn’t yet found the courage to inform her husband of the changed situation when Jor runs his hand across her belly one night and freezes.

“Lara?” he asks faintly, tone half shocked and half something else, and Lara is terrified of what the other half might be.

“Jor,” she starts and doesn’t know how to continue – and then her husband wraps both hands around the growing bump, his grip both gentle and protective.

“We’re having another child,” he says, more statement than question, and now his tone is wonder and determination.

“Yes. A little girl. She seems healthy so far,” Lara confirms, and then they both start moving and end up in a tight embrace.

“Nobody knows,” Jor says some minutes later, more statement than question again, but this time Lara has to shake her head.

“Faora caught me when I had just found out – I was a bit in shock at the point ….”

“And she hasn’t told Zod?” her husband asks, half incredulous, half impressed. But then his grip tightens and he growls, “When he finds out, he won’t try anything – or any of them. I’ll make sure of that!”

Lara hasn’t smiled for real in weeks, but now her cheeks hurt for the wideness of her smile.

“I’m not worried about Zod,” she declares – and finds that it has grown true. “Faora has a plan. But Jax-Ur, on the other hand ….”

“Any of them!” Jor repeats, and there is _fire_ in his voice.

Her husband has abandoned Krypton and found a whole new world for their firstborn, and the intervening years have only honed his determination. He would burn down Krypton all over again for this child, and Lara knows that Jor is _capable_ of doing so, and the thought is more reassuring than it has any right to be.

She kisses him for that, she just can’t help it.

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

Nam-Ek, of all people, is the next to notice something off.

The huge man puts a hand against her belly one day, a clear question on his face, and the baby chooses this very moment to kick against his touch.

Under different circumstances, the way the immensely strong and fearsome frontline fighter jumps back, stumbles and ends up on his knees a few meters away, would be humorous. Now, Lara is terrified of what his next reaction will be.

It’s to stay on his knees, lips moving soundlessly, and then he just gives up on finding words and gestures. Huge hands folded closely, he cradles something incredibly small and rocks it gently from side to side.

Lara swallows thickly. “Yes, a baby.”

Nam-Ek smiles brightly enough to light up the entire corridor.

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

By and large, that is the general reaction among the other soldiers, too, when they find out.

Getting chosen for parenthood has always been considered a high honor on Krypton, and even more so among the military caste. And after over a decade of the universe hammering down on them on how much they have lost, on how little is left of the people whose protection is the very purpose that flows through their veins, the heretic means of achieving said parenthood seems to have lost most of its abhorrence.

Zod is one of the last to find out – and Lara has not even actively avoided him the way she does with Jax-Ur – so whatever activity has Faora grinning smugly most of the time, it works to distract the general rather well. Lara has _firmly_ decided not to dwell too deeply on that question.

Zod is **_not_** happy about the news, but his rants about irresponsible behavior and brainless risk-taking – a vicious echo of an accusations Jor (and more rarely, Lara) have leveled at the soldiers before – sound oddly like concern about bringing a child into a hostile situation, in Lara’s ears.

As the birth draws nearer, she even gets the weird impression that it is _her_ safety as much as the baby’s that the general is worried about.

Jor laughs at her when she mentions it. And then he points out the obvious: as the leader of the military caste, Zod has the need to protect Krypton sunk into his bones even more deeply than any of the other soldiers, and the ship and the people aboard is all the general has left of Krypton.

No wonder if he gets a bit obsessive ….

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

The birth is not quite as bad as Lara feared and, above all, over more quickly than the last one. Faora goes uncharacteristically pale when Lara says so aloud.

Her daughter – whom Lara has decided to name Na'ama, weeks ago – is smaller than her older brother, and perhaps even a tad premature, but strong enough to protest loudly against this cold, bright place she has been forced into.

Once cleaned and nursed she quiets quickly, though, and regards the new world with wide-eyed curiosity.

Jor gushingly pronounces her a born explorer and therefore scientist – and is promptly kicked sharply in the ribs by Faora, who has her hands full of inquisitive baby and is unwilling to free even an elbow for the chastisement, but is resourceful enough to find another way.

Na'ama coos with fascination at the sudden movement, and Faora’s smirk promises a repeat performance, but Lara clears her throat, demands her daughter back, and sends off the commander to inform the rest of the ship. Faora huffs but does as told, if not without promising the baby solemnly that she will teach the little girl that move as soon as she can walk.

Lara can feel a headache coming. Jor looks a little hunted.

He is back to aggressively proud father when it’s time to face off with Zod, who stoically does not ask to hold Na'ama even if he stares at her with hungry eyes, until Jor relents and hands the baby over.

From there on Na'ama makes the round among the soldiers, handled with reverence by each and every one of them, up to Nam-Ek looking like he’s on the verge of falling to his knees again when he is handed the baby girl.

Na'ama takes an instant liking to the huge frontline fighter, intrigued by the fact that he can cradle her in one large hand and cup the other protectively around her.

When Jax-Ur impatiently demands to hold the baby, too, Nam-Ek turns his broad back at him and then reluctantly hands Na'ama over to Car-Vex, one of the soldiers who have automatically closed rank with the frontline fighter against the older scientist.

Tiny fists wave in protestation to the switch, trying to keep a hold on the much, much larger fingers, and Nam-Ek lets his arm get dragged from Car-Vex to Tor-An to Dev-Em before he finally retracts it when Jor-El retrieves his daughter.

Jax-Ur is left empty-handed, barely allowed a closer look while Na'ama lies in her father’s arms, but with the glares of every single soldier aboard burning into his back, the scientist doesn’t dare to protest.

As reassuring the obvious protectiveness towards her daughter is, it is just as hard to shoo out the soldiers when Lara tries to get some rest.

Zod is especially resistant to all hints – _and outright demands!_ – that he should leave, but just when Lara tries to gauge if she can barter cuddles with Na'ama for Nam-Ek bodily picking up his general, Faora grabs Zod’s hand and places it against her belly.

The general goes pale enough that Lara wonders for a moment if he might faint, and offers no further resistance when his second-in-command drags him from the room.

By the time Na'ama is six months old, she will gain a little playmate, Lara learns later.

SZSZSZSZSZSZS

By the time an ancient scout-ship’s signal leads them to Kal-El, he has two further siblings.

Plus, a grand total of seven other children burning to meet Na'ama’s, Alura‘s and Dor-El‘s oldest brother.

The poor boy is a little overwhelmed.


End file.
